World Battlefronts: BATTLE OF ASIA: New Chinese Wall?

The Japanese took a leaf from the strategy book of General U.S. Grant. As
Grant had sliced off the western half of the Confederacy by his Mississippi
campaign, the Japs worked, with fearsome force, to cut off the western side
of the clamp fastened on the Empire (see map) by Allied strategy.

The enemy's plan had long been apparent. It was to secure the
Peiping-Hankow-Canton railroad, firmly establish the Empire's equivocal
hold on southeast China east of the railroad, knock out U.S. air bases there,
and try to make the coast impregnable to U.S. attack. It...